Success. Fog machine chugs out enough smoke to run for Congress.
Red Laser Center reports the red laser is still being a wimp.
Purple Laser Center reports the purple laser is definitely non-functional.
LED Center reports LEDs still just dickin' around.
All other systems nominal.

Observations:

Good power smoke stream as the fog machine is operating strongly.
Plenty of smoke giving brilliant laser trails.

Conclusion: time to get psychotic with light

Purple lasers from China are weenies. That was the last of three to fail.
Loss of the red laser is deemed terminal due to excessive wimp. This is a loss as failure of purple doesn't mean much in a mix with green and blue/violet but red is obvious.

The mix for the home-brew fog juice is 80:20 distilled water to glycerin. I couldn't get more than 16 oz of glycerin as the stuff is almost $6.00 a bottle so that means that on the eve of my sixty-fourth birthday, in the fading years, in the very twilight of my life, yes, finally I have a use for the old math puzzle.

I have a gallon of distilled water which is 128 oz. For an 80:20 mix with 16 oz of glycerin, I only need 64 oz of the distilled water.

So, how do I measure out exactly sixty four ounces.

In the sixty years since I last saw this puzzle, I have learned one thing: it is no more interesting now than it was sixty years ago. The answer is that distilled water is .88 at Wal-Mart. Pour about half down the drain and lose .44. That's not going to change the level of starvation here.

With a war-time headline, CNN tells us TRAGEDY STRIKES as if Pearl Harbor had been bombed all over again.

There there's a reference to the 'tragedy posing questions about the future of space tourism' as if anyone but CNN will ask them and as if anyone would read them if they did.

The actual situation is that one test pilot was killed. The other ejected but was still seriously injured. The Virgin Galactic Two vehicle did not explode in midair. The problem may have come from a new fuel they were using for the first time in a manned flight. That the other pilot was injured even though he managed to eject further implies a fuel problem of some kind to me as perhaps that invaded the cabin. This is just guessing and we will have to wait.

I did not get any of that information from CNN as I was immediately appalled by how CNN sought to sensationalize it thus read no further.

It raises no more questions about the future of space tourism than existed already. Is it still fucking dangerous? Yes, it still fucking is. Do you fucking get it.

Imbeciles.

Fortunately the imbeciles are not much respected as tickets for flights on Virgin Galactic Two go for $250,000 per person payable in-advance and they have sold many. For some, danger is a part of life. For CNN, it is something to sell fat people who live at far more threat of early death than any thrillseeker will ever face but their choice is cardiac arrest from inactivity. Nothin' but a bunch of huckster hound dogs in CNN's kennel.

Hopefully it's a peach of a day with li'l tinies dressed up in ridiculous things and blasted to the Moon on sugar.

Update:

I've looked at this a few times and wondered just what the hell is the offense this time. Trying to defuse 'the other dick' is a bad idea. Who the fuck knows. If there's an opportunity to throw a knife, just throw it. This is all Internet and none of it is real anyway.

Maybe you think old hat as you can drive MIDI from many guitars or mount a MIDI pickup on many others. The MIDI pickup can be used to send MIDI to a light controller.

But ... you lose the original purpose of the pickup which was to drive a MIDI synth, typically a Roland GR-20 but there are multiple others and newer ones. Mine is busted but I still wouldn't give up the pickup to control lights as maybe Tinkerbell makes the synth work again.

Step up to a MIDI pad as Amptone Lab has an XY MIDI Pad that looks to be a square about ten cm on a side and it mounts flat to the body of the guitar. (There is considerably more to installation than just sticking it onto the body as various switches are required and the body needs to be bored for the MIDI cable. This is for experts.)Notes: Prices: XY MIDI Pad is €139 which is about $175 US. The other models are somewhat less.Weight: No luck finding any specification but it couldn't be much.Installation: Don't even think about it. Find a luthier.Total Cost: I'd plan on spending as much for the installation as for the device so call it $350 US.Play: A MIDI cable adds a lot of drag. If you already have one for a guitar synth, you're going to want to play in one place as dragging two MIDI cables plus the standard would leave you gift-wrapped by the end of the song.

MIDI pads are a big hit with people lately, particularly with Ableton Live musicians. However, those pads are huge relative to a guitar body and would be impossible to use. The XY MIDI Pad is tiny and easily mountable to a guitar. That will make the guitar hideously ugly but there is a lot of coolness in the capability the pad gives.

There are three types of MIDI pads as the mini is a bit smaller than the XY MIDI Pad but still mounts the same way between the bridge and the strap. Amptone Lab also has a MIDI Strip and it mounts parallel to the strings, taking up quite a bit less space than the other models. (See above about installation)

The larger MIDI pads send a one octave range of notes plus 0-127 in controller code which should be quite enough to do some kind of devilment with a light controller.

The big question is what do you do as presumably you want the lights to change in sync with your move. Maybe you sweep some grand chord and the lights should change when it starts? in the middle? after the last string? For me it seems it would be most natural after the last string, your hand is naturally moving over the strip anyway so ... pop ... and the lights change.

The actual purpose is the light controller manages a family of lights (e.g. Elation DMX Operator and many others). It has patches which direct how each one of the lights in the family will behave. If you send a MIDI signal from the guitar, it can change from one patch and all the lights will change at once. Typically you would not want to do that on the beat or whatever as it would compromise your playing way too much plus it would be way too much excessive. It seems most natural that the lights would change with song to verse or break to crazy guitar, etc. Therefore, not so many patches would be needed in the light controller as you won't change them that much anyway.

Note on Elation DMX Operator The device only responds to MIDI notes and it will pick up 0-127. However, the XY MIDI Pad sends notes through only one octave. Nevertheless, the ability to select between twelve light/laser patches on the controller from the guitar is spectacular.

Or maybe you would want to change lights quickly. What do I know. They're your buttons, do something insane with them. The potential is definitely there.

Note on above: all of them use batteries. With the 13-pin MIDI cables from Roland, there's a hot wire but the Amptone Lab devices appear to use standard MIDI and therefore do not have an external power supply.

There's a lot of material for funny in my life and I have been advised multiple times I should do a biography but my response was my tragedy (sob) is that my life story would be a comedy.

Once you strip away the crap just about everyone's life story is a comedy as Obama must turn to Michele every so often and say, "Girl, you know what. They put me in charge of the entire country's nuclear arsenal. Do you believe that shit??"

Then they laugh. How could you not. The magnificence of that absurdity is beyond any comprehension until you are in that position.

Plus I'm getting tired of the Sasquatch intro / outro. The intro for the Galactic Peace Tour was moderately cool but the outro with the Death Visits the Van scene was pretty gruesome even if I do say it was a fairly cool effect.

I'm dancing a little bit with the idea of a 50's sitcom intro but then someone goes retro. I don't care about retro, I care about funny. It definitely has to be short as funny can't wait.

Video works best as it's easier and a ton more natural than typing which is necessarily constraining simply by the physical act of doing it ... your mind can only move as fast as your fingers type or your mind is moving so fast your fingers can't possibly keep up and most of your thought is lost. Pfft.

Content would be the history stories you've seen in the blog and suggestions would be cool as there was some funny stuff.

Examples:

Kidnapping the Old Dog to take him to the Ann Arbor hash festival in '72??

The Cleveland Car-Jumping Rodeo

Losing RH at a concert and seeing him returned to us ... as they passed him back hand over hand. Yes, he is alive to this day but I have not spoken with him. I tried to reach him but had no luck.

Trippin' at the Genesis concert with Lotho and an Un-Named Wood Sprite

Kaci Hickox is not someone I'm willing to call a nurse although she called herself one in previous times. Today her purpose is to single-handedly demolish any concept of quarantine, especially if it applies to her, and to make it look like yet another state intrusion into her rights, as if dying from blood coming out of your eyes and ears is a Constitutional matter.

Manifesting this kind of selfishness, it's not clear how or why she ever tried to become a nurse in the first place.

There is no hysteria in me regarding Ebola as if it's well-managed then I perceive zero threat to me. However, well-managed is specifically defined as getting irresponsible attention sluts such as Kaci Hickox out of the health profession.

Kaci Hickox is probably not contagious but what she's doing is loosening the controls on someone who will be and she's the one who will kill you. Do send a thank you card to Kaci Hickox when that happens ... or have your relatives do it.

A twenty-year-old guy was busted for some reefer and some papers and that quantity is clearly indicative of casual possession rather than distribution for sale. He was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff’s Department in Florida.

Naturally, the appropriate police response is to give his name / mugshot to the paper because it's a funny shirt. To amuse themselves, this kid is shamed as much as they can possibly manage. (Metro UK: Guy wears best T-shirt ever for police mugshot)

Said Sgt. Scott Lineberger, "It had an element of humor to it."

The only element of humor is that Lineberger calls himself a cop and that's some dark stuff. It takes tons of narcotics on a daily basis to supply the nation's addicts and this cop thinks he's a hero for shaming a kid with a joint. Sure, Sarge, that's very funny. How much did they pay you to ignore the real dealers, funny guy.

The days of Serpico were long ago and we need thousands more like him. He was a real cop.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

There was no question of using a Laughing Gecko t-shirt for a video and I was thinking of Reverend Sasquatch but which one would be cool enough.

Thank you for the new one and the picks are not forgotten. I'm waiting for the South California Purples to arrive. I very rarely buy stuff so what is this wait for delivery business. They should arrive 11-3 / 11-6.

The music has not been shelved for Sasquatch but there's a lot of pacing going with it.

There's not a long list planned for production so whatever the tune there will be a Laughing Gecko shirt in it. The latest has a very cool thought to it and the blue is great but there might be a concern. The blue laser is, by far, the most powerful so I might need to brush up on some physics as I'm not sure if the blue of the shirt will absorb the blue beam and negate it ... or if it will store it up and explode. I'm a bit fuzzy on that.

The "Symphony for Cat" is big as I keep going back to it on the synth ... but it still bugs me. It's got A/B parts and the chord changes aren't exotic but they flow ... but they only get so many loops before you want to get the flamethrower.

Something I've tried already was to modulate the A/B and do the same thing up 3-4-5 or whatever and that's ok for "Summertime Blues" but it's not going to do it here. It doesn't have to be my magnum opus but it does have to not suck so it's interesting trying to siphon the suckage out of it.

The other approach is to use only the guitar and it is good that way as loops build quickly and they tend to be more intricate. Both ways come up in screwing around working up something but I'm undecided.

I want to do something tomorrow so I can deliver it on my birthday. From here out, they definitely need No Tears guarantees on them too. I can't guarantee there will be no tears from the guitar playing but not from the content of the video. Part of the reason I uploaded "All But My Life" is that it shocked me too. So, ok, that was shocking but you can't dance to shocking so move along, move along.

So great is the embarrassment of the existence of this group that the good Reverend Silas T Sasquatch is hanging up his colander and may never eat pasta again. There are just as many missionaries in that crowd as for the Church of the Infinite Suffering of the Mangled Babies and Ducks.

The Great God of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is Richard Dawkins, the Elvis Presley of Atheism, and thus they have violated the First Commandment which says clearly 'Thou shalt take no God before the Flying Spaghetti Monster.' They took Dawkins and now they're going to burn. Sorry.

The first question in meeting this crew is, "Uh, honey, are you quite sure you understand the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not real?"

Don't wait for an answer as that will just confuse the hell out of them.

Dawkins did some interesting research in genetics many years ago and he came up with the idea of 'extended phenotypic expression.' This is the idea a gene in one organism can have expression in some other organism. There are some interesting phenomena in nature that warrant such thinking but thus far you'll take his idea on faith as follow-up research does not appear to have confirmed it.

So now he's a writer for the Great Cause of Atheism and the result is a crew who are just as repressive as the one they claim they revile.

There's no joke in it anymore as it's become a parody of a parody. For example, there's the annual billboard on a bridge into New York City at Christmas to tell you how much of a moron you are if you believe anything religious. I wouldn't be waiting for a world spiritual awakening behind that one but, wtf, it could happen, right.

I suppose I alienate people because wimps won't be able to hack this part. I should probably turn off 'friends of friends' in Facebook as I don't like the concept in any case. In real, the tribe decides if a newbody gets in. Man, if you don't like Astronomy, how could we ever talk. Take a hike.

Hey, y'all, that guy didn't like Astronomy.

Booooooooo.

There are only about thirty connections in Facebook whereas previously there had been thousands. The only way you can do that is by ignoring all these so-called friends as there's no possible way to keep up with what that many people are doing.

So.

You know how it goes with your posse or wrecking crew or whatever you call them: it just takes one veto from the tribe and the new body will go plus maybe the one with the veto will go also just for starting a ruckus. Can't have ruckus in yer tribe, can you.

I'll be sixty-four on Saturday and the VA will celebrate on Monday with another batch of tests. My doctor asked me last time if I wanted to know what's busted and I'm starting to think it's best to walk away. This isn't so much fatalism as management. There's really nothing they can do as any kind of surgery will croak me anyway. I'm thinking much better to focus on playing as that requires work, movement, heart pumping. It's not cardio exercise but it's a honkin' lot more work to play than you may imagine. The sweating isn't from stage lights.

In fact, you can see that in the "All But My Life" video as there's a point where I lose my footing while I'm playing but my arms are steel on the guitar as I'm damned if I'll lose the note.

I'm thinkin' VA puts a hole in the holism, if I may borrow a word a previous manager abused relentlessly, as the holistic approach or my interpretation of it is that positivity comes through focus on the music in the love and life and light that it brings as anything that detracts from those things is necessarily destructive of them. That includes the negativity of constantly being reminded 'yep, you are fucked.' I know that already and it's factored into things. To keep being reminded just gives me termites.

Must think about it some more. I need the prescriptions but I think I'm about done with the poking and prodding. When each time comes up with the same answer, I'm not seeing a lot of point in it.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

My colander has to be relinquished at the nearest Chick-Fil-A and I must turn myself in for re-training at the Flying Spaghetti Monster Pasta Institute.

My crime: I failed to own a T-shirt with text that in any way resembled 'I SURVIVED CATHOLICISM'

I admit it's a hideous offense as how can anyone I expect to relate to someone who has been grinding the same boring axe for twenty years without being as boring as they are.

When even so-called radicals bore the bejeebers out of me, there may be a problem. It's getting more and more clear to me that I need a new planet.

Update: It's official. I'm an ex-member of the Facebook Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sob). They threw me out moments ago and still, yes, still the shock waves reverberate through the studio. Oh, the hell of this deep black void.

Yep, kicked out of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sob). I said they were officious and pretentious nitwits and I don't think they liked it much. That might have been it, I think.

Silas ScarboroughIt's a tragedy on this High Holy Day of the Pastafixion, when the Romans tried to crucify the Flying Spaghetti Monster but they kept trying to attach him to the cross with noodles and, over and over, he slipped right off again. It came out as badly as you would expect. Yes, overcooked pasta. God, how I hate overcooked pasta.

The good Reverend Silas T Sasquatch is pleased to present just about every nasty thing you ever wanted to say to a griefer but didn't because you were afraid it would draw more of them. I say fuck 'em. I've been griefed before and I'll be griefed again.

Tip to performers: always mute them. Their only purpose is to taunt you and they know you are vulnerable. Vampires can only come in if you invite them. Talking to them will not bring them to the Lord, they are already dead.

"Griefers call themselves artists but that's no more true than putting newspaper into a litterbox turns a cat into a journalist." - Silas Scarborough

That doesn't have anything to do with anything. I just liked the title. I'm crazy so I can do weird shit like that and people just go, well, you know, he's crazy.

Audio Sync with Final Cut Pro

The audio sync on "All But My Life" has been driving me somewhat bugged and my suspicion seems to be correct that it was caused by a problem in frame rates. The number of frames of video information shown per second is the frame rate. The name is probably a holdover from using film when you could hold frames of a film in your hand and easily see each one.

Audio information doesn't have a frame rate as it's unnecessary to reproduce the sound. However, to use that sound in a video it needs to be converted to the frame rate of the video and this is where you may hit trouble as video standard has been 29.97 frames per second. I'm sure someone can tell you why that particular number but I have no idea. It's quite possible your audio file will be converted to 30 frames per second and that's what blows the sync. Particular attention to any frame rate conversion is mandatory to ensure the audio video sync if you use audio from any non-video source to augment your video.

I will probably go back into "All But My Life" as the video is personally important or more so than some others and it will be the perfect test to verify I truly understand the solution as that audio sync is blown completely after about five or six minutes of play. I didn't realize it before I uploaded it as all my audio sync testing is at the start of the audio stream, not the end of it.

Ableton Live

If someone tells you this is 'a sequencer on steroids,' murder the speaker and find someone who knows the subject.

You can get Ableton Live Intro for $99 US and this is the software component of the product. It has tremendous capability for manipulating audio loops, samples, and just about anything you can throw at it. All very nice, very nice.

What kicks butt is when you roll Ableton Push into it as this is the hardware component of the product. Now the price jumps to $599 US but I have heard it quoted at €489 in Europe. When you factor in the higher trading rate for the Euro, that accounts for some of the price differential but not all of it.

No need for a full review as these are popular products and you can certainly find reviews all around. The attitude of the people using the systems is interesting as a good many believe analog instruments are Old School and that expression alone deserves a Sasquatch as it is such a limiting ideology that it's disturbing.

All I want out of Ableton Push is the drum / percussion capabilities. Maybe you say $599 US is too much for a drum box. If you were referring to the Boss DR-880 as that's just about what it cost and it's a total stinking piece of horse puckey. Processes don't work or are illogical and the result is the only drum patterns coming out of it are the stock ones which are so white that some states have written law to ban the device such that it is only used in Connecticut.

The capability to do interesting things to drum beats with Ableton Push is very high and its level of electronic integration is very good (i.e. it's easy to plug stuff into it via MIDI, etc). The biggest problem with looping isn't usually making the loops but rather getting a beat behind them that doesn't turn people into serial killers.

At this stage of my game, even if I had the money I would think long about whether to buy the system. It has obvious merit but it also has tremendous potential for electronic button pushing which I hate like eating raw clams.

However, were I considering the situation at the same point of the purchase of the Boss DR-880, there would be no consideration ... the Boss DR-880 costs about the same as Ableton Live and Ableton Push combined. In that situation I would have bought Ableton immediately.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

This is another reality show as this experiment is the reverse of the previous with no stunts and no fake accent. The smashing of the monument with the Ten Commandments in Oklahoma is a fascinating perspective on the visual anarchy of so many things that appear to be real but are not.

I even found a light, a fookin' 40-watt bulb. A candle is brighter than a fookin' 40-watt bulb. To use it I had to use a thirty-foot extension cord because it's the Mighty Reserve to cover any electric problem that may happen. So now it's plugged into a lamp with an elephant that has a monkey on its back with a tail that holds the light bulb. Believe I invent this if you wish. Meanwhile I will continue trying to imagine the symbology behind this magnificent creation. I really have to hand it to Yevette on this lamp as it may well be the coolest house lamp I have ever seen.

So the light comes out of the monkey's tail and light is the music and the love and the life in its endless circle but it only works when the monkey is standing on the back of an elephant. I didn't get that part before about the elephant and will meditate on its meaning.

Monday, October 27, 2014

The manuals for all laser / LED devices have been located and this is a big win as there is no chance of programming these things without them. If you hate MIDI programming, you will hate DMX programming even more. It was pointless to try anything yesterday as that would just have been button-pushing to see what happens.

The RayBans remain in France and that's unfortunate as they were the great defense against the All-Powerful Blue Laser. That one is 300 mW and you think the sun is bright ... until you get a flash in the face from that baby.

Programming is moving along and there are green and blue lasers all over the walls just now. I was toying with giving myself a birthday party as it's on Saturday and the plan was to do a live video stream with the lasers but there's no way to do that in the dark for Euros. They are an hour earlier just now because America and Europe still aren't (cough) clever enough to sync the switch on Daylight Savings Time but that still wouldn't make the difference as it's a six-hour offset to Germany. It's really not dark at six here and that would be midnight in Germany, the party would already be over before it ever started in Texas. And really to be dark enough for lasers and smoke, it's got to be nine or later. I haven't got the smoke stuff yet but it's cheap and there's a CVS a mile from here.

The purpose in anarchic visuals is as a representation of the extraordinary level of cognitive dissonance in things supposedly stable and ostensibly real. It's an image that's become Americana with a bunch of people in a McDonald's, families at tables eating, kids playing on that goofy park equipment, and, in its way, it's beautiful ... until some nutjob screams SAVE THE REDWOODS, pulls a gun out of his pocket, and starts firing. This can't happen here but, wtf, it just did.

The illusion of safety and reality in a great many things is what drives me to create something that's nothing but illusion but is absolutely real. You saw from "All But My Life" that I'm not hiding anything and visual anarchy isn't a disguise but a point. There is no safety with people walking around with guns in their pockets, it's an obvious illusion as guns still only do one thing. Therefore I do not believe what is ostensibly visual truth is any truth at all and my portrayal will necessarily be something else.

The music has to be consistent with the anarchy so that's where it gets interesting. If you really want musical anarchy, you'll be going out into twelve tones (i.e. play any key you like, just make it work). There is truth in that experimentalism but it's not what I seek and that's what makes it a good trick to come up with whatever will work with what will definitely be visual anarchy. I figure, what the hell, attach a laser to the head of the guitar as well, the battery box is light.

The timing is important as it's not an unlimited shot because I'll run out of gas and this video isn't allowed to be a heartbreaker. I didn't pace myself well enough for the last one and it's not a heartbreaker doing that again, that's just being stupid.

Some notes about "All But My Life" -

It may look like I'm all tragic in playing but that isn't what I feel. What actually is happening is total focus on the music and Cat listening to it.

The look at the end when I really did stop is all tragic but the reason is I felt I had failed with the last part. I was setting out looking for another groove but as I started into it I knew I wouldn't make it and had to bail out. It came down very quickly as stop, you are done.

The trick is pacing and I played again yesterday but there was no medical aspect to stopping and it worked out well. I didn't find a progression that particularly did it for me but it's good nevertheless. It's like Edison said, well, that wasn't a failure but rather a discovery that this solution is not the way to make lightbulbs.

As a closer, try visualizing this one: the laser / light controller understands MIDI and the way it's implemented it only responds to notes. What that means is each different note you play on the keyboard will trigger a patch change in the light controller. For example, maybe the LEDs advance through the RGB spectrum as you go up the keyboard. Similarly, the activity of the lasers could be controlled the same way as there are different patches for each class of devices (i.e. all the green lasers are one class, the blue one has its own, etc). Combine all of these and the result is an orderly progression of laser / light effect based entirely on what is being played.

The above is going to get some serious attention as the practicality of implementing it in such a way is still to be discovered (i.e. it could really be a bitch). It's worth the attention as it's been a dream since I was a kid to be able to see music and this might well be the closest way I can put together to do it.

We are amazed that Captain America Sasquatch could spare any of his patriotic time to talk with us tonight and we are delighted he consented to be recorded. Here he is now to tell you how elephants relate to laser beams, patriotically.

Governor Mary Fallin said she would have the monument replaced. At issue is that it's on state property and is thus violating separation of church and state. I see some merit in moving the monument somewhere else as then Governor Mary Fallin might read what's on it. She's the same governor who presided over an execution that took thirty minutes or more and went on to authorize more after that. On that basis, I'd say, yah, move it somewhere she might pay attention to what's on it.

As to driving yer car into it, see above about he's an asshole. I think he's just a creep who's looking for a vacation home and doesn't mind putting up with some prison man love to get it.

Gandhi was once asked by the General in command of the British forces in India, "Do you think the British Army will simply march out of the country and leave?"

Gandhi replied, "That's exactly what I think you will do."

They did.

Smashing up the monument with the car was screwed-up. This is just some fool so boring he couldn't come up with a better way to get his name in the paper.

It doesn't count unless the monument is carried away by the same people who put it there and they do it because they no longer believe it should be there either.

I don't particularly care if they have it up there but if you do that then maybe it would be better to actually follow what's on it. There's nothing on there that asks all that much. It doesn't really ask you to do anything.

It shouldn't be such a terrible stretch for atheists to own it also as 'thou shalt hold no other god before me' is, in my view, non-specific. It could be the God of Thermodynamics for all the difference it makes to the logic if not the authority of what follows but the logic alone should be sufficient to warrant the authority.

The Ministry of the Internet doesn't have a problem with it so long as people aren't hammering it's this God or that God as the Ten Commandments work for just about anyone otherwise. Maybe a reminder of these things isn't so terrible ... so long as you put them somewhere Governor Mary Fallin will read them.

The good Reverend Silas T Sasquatch got to wondering, hmmm, just how would you shoot lasers out of yer head. That's when the great Flying Spaghetti Monster extended a wiggly tentacle of inspiration and in that Vision this video was born.

This is kind of an apology for the bumout in the last one even though I do not feel apologetic for doing it. I'm apologetic insofar as it's way too heavy to handle in the morning. This one now is not heavy at all and will definitely not make anyone cry. In making tears I am sorry as that is never my purpose, not even to people I really, really don't like. I don't want to make them cry either ... stabbing them would be ok, tho.

Alan Eustace did this two days ago and forever he must be addressed as His Dudeness for this stunt. They just attached his suit to the balloon and let it rip. He hung from it like that for two hours for the ascent and here's the beauty part: what broke him loose from the balloon was a set of explosive bolts.

It took him fifteen minutes to get back down again and his speed at one time was about 880 mph. He flies alone way faster than a Boeing 747 going flat out.

Where they found a balloon big enough to lift the stones of His Dudeness is left to you to discover.

I know this is frivolous rich bitch crap but, dayum, is it cool. He had no Red Bull sponsor and his cameras were just GoPros. He just decided, screw it, I have to do something ridiculously insane ... so he did.

There isn't the heart in it just now although I will do a tour through the news to see if there's a Sasquatch in it.

The "All But My Life" video is very disturbing to watch as I had never seen that either. I knew things got weird when I played and sometimes I fell but stuff happens and you recover, the show must go on. I had no idea until I saw the video and it doesn't depress me but rather makes me all the more determined to produce whatever I can as music really is life. You can see the truth of that in the video.

What I also know is I can't handle anything else.

Maybe it's The Beatles trippin' my stuff as will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four. That's in a couple of days. I don't think it's disturbing me all that much as it's a safe bet I'm fucked-up already.

The only thing I know for sure is that music is life is love is light. It doesn't come from anywhere else and it never did. You started with music and that was the beating of your mother's heart. It was the light then and it's the light now. And I do mean light as you don't even know what light is yet. You don't even know warm and cold as you're always warm. The only sensation is the heartbeat and that is what, I believe, you first 'see.'

Your mother's heartbeat also has a back beat, you can't lose it, as the heartbeat is always lub-dub lub-dub. You've been rock'n'roll since your first li'l molecule popped into awareness.

A heartbeat at rest is usually about 70+ beats per minute. A common song beat is 120 bpm and it's down to blues and anthems if you come down to the same rate as the heartbeat. I think the lub-dub in your heartbeat is only one count so that would mean the actual musical heartbeat is around 140 bpm and that's definitely got enough speed to dance to it. If you go up to 180 bpm then you're pushing very hard and that's really not for dancing. Going much faster than that is usually just for tricks.

For example, "I Love Rats" is something I'll do at 160 or 180 bpm depending on how aggressive I want the rat love to be. I suppose you could dance to it but you'd fall over dead at the end.

So I'll see if I can find any Sasquatch material in the news of the weird.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Once I finally came up with a few dollars for some extension cords, most of the lights started right away. There's one red laser that's acting congressional but all the others seem to do well. The purples always were sissies so I didn't expect much from them. There is one blue at 300 mW and that might be a bit excessive when the hand lasers are 5 mW but excessive is always good for video.

Whoa, the red is coming to life. Maybe it's not a politician after all.

The next video won't resemble the last one. I'm not apologetic over the "All But My Life" video but I know it was hard to watch. The last part was very important as nothing else can say better that this is what things are now ... but I'll get up and do it again as soon as I possibly can. I've felt fairly strongly there's the impression that I just sit around all the time feeling sorry for myself. The video was, in part, to set that straight.

The next one will be for trips. The smoke machine will probably work as the only things in them are a heater and a fan. The fog juice is 80/20 distilled water with glycerin. Metric is much better for working this as a pint is about 500 ml so a mix of 400 ml distilled water and 100 ml of glycerin should make smoke galore. And the beauty part: that stuff costs peanuts. (At a music store, a 'pro' bottle of fog juice will cost $20-$25 a gallon and I am not EVEN kidding.)

None of this stuff has been used in years so right now it runs and colors flash all over the place. I'll leave it like that for a while as I quite like it and I'll also observe for, erm, fires, etc.

It will probably take a few days to get this ready as the lasers need to be programmed and, all together now, COMPUTERS HATE US. That will entail a period of button-pushing and then it will be time to shoot something. All instruments must be part of it to satisfy me this is as trippy as I can make it. Note: there is a mike connected to the mixer that goes to the looper so I really could get a cow bell into a loop and I'm determined to do it at some time just because I never did.

In "All But My Life," the video was shot with an external camera and the result was loaded into Final Cut. The audio was also recorded by my stream software and that's a much better quality audio file because it's captured straight off the mixer.

Therefore, I add the audio-only track between the audio/video track from the mixer and then play Match the Waveforms. It's not so hard if zoom the view enough to see some detail. As you look closer it becomes obvious.

Once you match the waveform, chop out the camera audio and chuck it leaving only the audio-only from the stream in its place but it is now synced with the video.

The Problem

The sync is dead-on perfect at the start of the video but it is visibly off by the end of the song about eight minutes later. Both are digital files and should have been precisely matched and yet they were not.

One very thin idea is that audio/video frames were dropped either in recording on the camera or in the upload into Final Cut. That would change the timing but very slowly as the play would be moving subtly faster in the video than in the audio. The effect would be cumulative and that's what I see in the video but it's not a good enough answer.

Another observation is that I used the same technique to sync the video for the Cincinnati concert and that was perfect. The sync did not decay over time.

There's something shifty happening somewhere so I guess some Sherlock Holmes work is necessary.

You won't notice the sync problem unless you really look for it and it's not until the end.

There's also a bit of a nag that this has something to do with a 29.97 frame rate versus 30 for the audio-only file.

"All But My Life" was recorded with a live stream into Cat's Art MusikCircus. She was the only one there and I wanted it that way.

The video shows what it looks like on the other side of the avatar. You will discover the reason for the title if you watch it all the way through and you may find it hard to watch at the end. It is very important you understand my purpose has nothing to do with sympathy but rather to show music is life.

As I am playing you can see wobbling over this and that but things seem more or less OK. It's only when I stop you can see, holy mackerel, this guy is obliterated and obviously I wasn't stoned as I wasn't smoking anything. One of my favorites is the only mistake in music is to stop.

The decision to upload it was difficult as I confess part of it is to show I haven't been blowing any smoke at anyone. I'm a mess and this is way past anything inhalers and broccoli can fix. The only life is music and to the extent I play I will live. That's the part that's important and that's why I did it.

It's obvious but I'll say it anyway that it's a tribute as it shows how far I will go to play for Cat even if no-one else can hear it. Someone wanted to tell me about love recently so, ok, tell me about love.

The Galactic Peace Tour intro / outro are important to me as there was the campaign to wreck it and the video shows they got their pound of flesh but the Galactic Peace Tour is not dead so long as I'm still standing.

The last words from German translated: Always I will try. I would like to play, I must play. Above all for you. I love you, my snugglebunny.

(Schmuseling is a word I made up because German needs something that means snugglebunny.)

The video shows the diamonds on the Galaxy Guitar better than anything ever did. If you watch the stars when the guitar is turned toward the camera, you will see the number of them changing as it moves, they really do twinkle. The Mystery Lady and I spent hours on a Summer day at a table in a park deciding exactly where every single one of those stars should go because, well, that's the place it needs to be. Yah, Zen Galaxy, that's what it is.

Breast cancer is mentioned online quite a bit and there are also calls for awareness for the need for cancer research in general but mostly what I see are calls regarding breast cancer awareness.

So.

I wondered if the breast cancer awareness exists or is it really languishing in some way. The following is a chart from the National Cancer Institute and I'm sure we can agree it's a reputable source. Breast cancer awareness appears to be doing just fine as the apportionment going to that specific field is very much higher than for any other.

Don't read that to mean I think anything should change as what I see in this is encouraging to me. For all the graphics online about breast cancer being ignored, the financial crisis does not appear to be real.

None of this has to do with the personal impact as Tinkerbell got whacked hard by it. That gives me more reason to wonder what is being done to prevent it for others. The chart tells me a lot is being done and I do find that encouraging.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Non-Sasquatch Silas video coming as in a Silas video but not that Silas, the other one. I'm not sure if there are more.

The music is surprisingly ok but the video will show you why I haven't been taking gigs. It was spooky for me to see and I was mixed on uploading it but this was live for Cat and that was a special thing.

It will take some hours as the video will be HD 720 so you'll get ever glorious molecule this thing can produce. In fact, it looks like it will take enough hours to process that this would be a peach of a time to sleep.

I jacked the video in multiple ways but not in getting clever with compositing, etc. It's all a single shot view but the image has been modified to exaggerate colors in various demented ways.

Yep, multiple hours. I'll be more than happy to sleep while the computer works.

Thirty minutes surprised me greatly and the Laughing Gecko guitar picks are definitely well-seasoned. The paint is almost rubbed off one of them and it's starting to go on the other. If I use them any longer there's only one thing that will happen: start over with some that aren't broken. I will check them again for cracks before sending them as the peepers, they ain't what they once was. Plus there's enough paint left that you can tell they're Fender and not some GMO substitute. In fact, these are some globe-trotting picks as I've taken them everywhere with me for the last years, starting from the original gross of them.

The situation seems pretty obvious to me as my heart isn't getting it done. I can breathe enough for Sasquatch but getting up and down gets me wobbling almost immediately. It shouldn't take Doctor Schweitzer to figure that out and it won't as the hospital isn't going to do anything.

It doesn't take Doctor Schweitzer to figure out what to do about it: shut up and play. The getting up and down for the floor boxes is, in clear fact, the best calisthenic I can do. That it also happens to be the only calisthenic I can do works quite nicely for making noise happen. The next time I try will be with a camera. Maybe I will also use the laptop and iPad cameras as then I can capture a Wide World of Sports moment in three dimensions. (That guy who fell off the ski jump really did live through it.)

The music today was enough to say you ain't lost it yet. It's different but it ain't complete crap. There were two things and neither was "Das Paradies Song" but they make wheels turn which makes me want to know what happens if I try something like that approach again.

The deal for the t-shirts is to return two authentic, fair dinkum Silas Scarborough guitar picks that have been used at least five minutes.

This could get strange at the Post Office.

What's in the package, sir?Picks.Sir, it is illegal to send any type of creature through the mail.It's not a tick, it's a pick.Whether it's the pick of the ticks or the worst tick ever, you still can't mail it.Ticks have nothing to do with this.Then why didn't you say so in the first place.

You need to do some time travel so be sure you have clean underwear and let's get on with it.

Palestine is a free state and a voting member of the United Nations. It has been years and their economy has steadily grown to the point of serious international business connections. By treaty with NATO, they have agreed not to arm the nation as their defense will come from NATO. There is not currently any need for defense as hostilities with Israel stopped as soon as statehood was achieved. Immediately tensions started dropping.

Around the world the same thing happened as everyone has watched this forever and now finally a peace that is real.

With this penultimate battle of religions comes a peace which is known to be a truce but it is a peace nevertheless. It is the penultimate battle as the ultimate is the one that grows out of this one if the peace isn't real.

The battle goes around the world as Jew hating is a universal theme. That loses a huge part of its rationalization as Palestine steps into the world community. There will still be the ancient animosity about money lenders as likely there will still be the lack of acceptance of why Jews became money lenders in the first place. But even that would fade in the peace.

This is more Paradise than anything I can imagine as all of the largest conflicts of the world evaporate with that conflict resolved. There's nothing left after that except War Child finding the mines and taking care of the children. But even that job would finally be complete after some time.

Of all the Visions of Paradise that come to me, I can't find a better one.

Cure Ebola ... sure, they will. It sucks just now but they will figure it out. They figured it out with HIV.

There's no point in a list. I don't see anything that comes close to the beautiful things that would come to the world if only that one thing happened. I doubt anyone on the planet would forget the day Palestine became real and in the most beautiful of ways.

Trying to set up a list of good guys for commenting sucks in a least thirty-seven different ways and this will suck too if it prevents commenting normally.

So the experiment begins.

If there were a new Devil's Island, where would it be. The island must be real, available (i.e. unpopulated), and with ocean water around it that is just chockfull of really hungry sharks.

Child molesters, war criminals, etc go there because yo' ass ain't comin' back. Of course, you could make it easy on yourself and get eaten by a shark. Have a nice day.

Whatever the island used for "Papillon" ... get that one. It was perfect.

Update:

That was a quick fail. If you write a comment then it goes to Google+ but you can't see it here. wtf good is that. I turned it back off again.

Screw this. As I said at the top, turning on a good guy list sucks so, screw it, turn the comments as they were.

Something else that changed was Facebook as there were over five hundred 'friends' and it was overwhelming. Who the fuck are these people and why do I need to entertain them. I do need to entertain but I didn't even know who they were. They never went to shows so why should I do this. Now there's a different one and it has a dozen friends. Facebook will probably blow it away after a while so it's all part of the absurdity. I will only light a cigarette with a Zippo lighter, for example. If I have a Bic lighter, I will put it down and get the Zippo. Conversely, I will never use a Zippo for smoking reefer as it requires butane purity. These things are important. ISIS is not important. Brown recluse spiders are important.

It's all absurd as my life should mean something but why should it. Gandhi was one of the greatest men who ever lived and people love to quote him ... but what changed. Nothin' except people quote him all the time. Muslims told him to piss off and went to Pakistan. His dream went up in smoke.

Hard-core GOP thinks, fark, that was good work. How the hell do we do that?

To really call yourself an artist, you have to finish what you start and "Abandoning Paradise" is not complete without the song in it.

The ability to play anything is declining rapidly and the guitar gets heavier every time I hoist her up. Maybe you would think a bass is heavy but that thing is balsa wood next to the Galaxy Guitar, it's just long. (Insert bigger is better joke)

The "Paradise Song" is crucial as everywhere I go there are crazy people with guns. There are billboards along the highway that tell you to stop right here if you need help making a holster. That's right after the Praise Jesus billboard. I haven't seen one yet that said Pass the Ammunition. If I go into a McDonald's (I don't), there's a very good chance that someone in there will have a gun in his pocket.

This is the penance for divorcing the Mystery Lady but it's deeper as I never should have fucked up her life in the first place. I'm not at all forgetting how fantastically beautiful it was to sing with her and a million other things but in the end I'm more destructive than a wrecking crew and I will never ever forget. What happens now is what I deserve.

The only way to forgiveness is to put it right and that can't be done. The only thing that comes even close for her and anyone who has been demented enough to love me is to make "The Paradise Song." Yevette has shown a profound love as she doesn't ask for anything except to be her friend.

The techno tunes are something I can do as it's all in software. I can take samples and chop, puree, make a souffle ... but that's not what I do. DD loves to do that and she's very good at it but that isn't my instrument. For one thing it takes WAY the hell too much patience. DD is one determined lady and I admire that.

So, depressed ... ok, I'll buy that. People want to call it self-pity maybe but it doesn't matter. This is grim stuff as I've been identifying with Algernon for quite a while as things have slipped away. It's not a problem how it turns out but rather what happens in-between and I don't know if Algernon has another song in him. This crushes me to the floor.

I do get up and I did try playing for Cat tonight. The wobbling is very bad and the quality except for a little bit at the end was ... well. The first loop was 1/16th note short and that can't be fixed once you start it looping. There's no way to recover as nothing can possibly add up correctly.

I also tried playing piano earlier as well and that was toward a loop also. It's not as physically-strenuous but it's still wearing and I wasn't satisfied with the result although I do enjoy playing in F minor (lots of black keys).

There were three reasons for the blog when it started and this is a long history. In no particular order, the ones are the Mystery Lady, Lotho, and Yevette. Right now Yevette can't even see it and likely won't for months. Lotho is pissed and I'm sure he believes he has good reason. The Mystery Lady ist ein Schmetterling dass manchmal werde hier fliegen. (She is a butterfly that sometimes flies here.)

Gestern ihre Name Deutscher war. (Yesterday her name was German)

Mein Grammatik ist nicht richtig aber noch ich versuche. (My grammar is not right but still I try.)

(Cat is so much "The Paradise Song" but Paradise is for everyone. This is a song of my love but also it is for people I have hurt as I always feel that sorrow.)
"Das Paradies Song" musst auf Deutsch und auch auf Englisch sein.("The Paradise Song" must be in German and English.)
Ich muss diese Lied schreiben, machen, etc.(I must make, write, etc this song.)
Tangentially related is that Cat gave a beautiful review of "It's for You" as she appreciated the production and story that went into it. Like me, she has a low tolerance for half-ass so I appreciated it that she saw the flow of it and it worked for her. She didn't like the song and this is a reason I love her as she will tell me. In fact, it would have surprised me if she liked it as even though it's a fairly aggressive song, it's way, the way, the way the hell mainstream.

"Das Paradies Song" is not this one. "It's for You" is a special thing that is its own star in the Universe and nothing can ever touch that.

"Das Paradies Song" is what did you learn from all these years, bluesman. And don't tell me it's I-IV-V 12-bar because your ass won't last the first four bars before the bottles start flying and there's no chicken wire on this stage.

Cat, I'm sorry I speak in what's close to dialect. Try at translation: redneck bars are for drinkin' and fightin' and any band there better be good as they will throw bottles if you suck. Redneck bars know this and hang chicken wire in front of the stage but that doesn't help much if the bottle isn't empty. Welcome to America!

Weird Old Guy Memory: an Aunt from Australia came to visit in Cincinnati and there's a fairly high black population there, at least where we lived near the university. She had various interests as she presumably had the same hotshot mind as my ol' Dad but my all-time, bell-ringing favorite was when she said, "I should like to see the dark people."

Unsaid: You want to do fucking what?

Unsaid: Go outside. You will see dark people. Say hello.

There's a Mount Everest of weird racial stuff in Australia but really all she was trying to say was she wanted to go to a Baptist church where people would sing and dance and feel the Feelin'. That's a very American thing and, much as Sasquatch talks, it would be one blazing tragedy if whatever people stop showing that kind of passion.